For decades, caterers and restaurateurs have confronted the problems associated with moving food-filled, serving pans to and from steam tables. These pans are typically hot, heavy and bulky, necessitating that they be handled with great care to avoid scalding. Furthermore, a lack of handles makes serving pans difficult to grasp, let alone lift and carry. Of course, a spill from a pan used at a steam table wastes food and can be time-consuming to clean.
An improvised method is normally used to dislodge a pan from a steam table. It can involve using a knife or fork as a prying tool to raise the lip of a pan from a steam table and, then, grasping the pan with towel-covered hands. Once grasped, the pan is toted to a kitchen for refilling or cleaning. Moving the pan back to the steam table requires a similar procedure, but the use of a prying tool is not required in setting the pan onto the table. Regardless of the direction of movement of the pan, however, the towel sometimes falls into the pan, contaminating food in the pan and making the food unfit for human consumption.